'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Monday, November 27, 2017

China: campaign to evict Beijing's migrant workers

More than a hundred
Chinese intellectuals and scholars have decried a “ruthless” campaign to evict
thousands of migrant workers from Beijing. The latest round of
evictions began in the wake of a fire on 18 November that killed 19 people in
an industrial neighbourhood in south Beijing, and 17 of the victims were
migrants. City officials have declared a 40-day campaign against “illegal
structures”, which for years have housed the millions of migrant workers who
run Beijing’s restaurants, delivery companies, construction sites, retail shops
and a host of small factories.

The open letter, which
was addressed to the country’s leadership and circulated on Chinese social
media, called the evictions “a serious trampling of human rights”. Signatories
included professors, researchers, poets and artists and more names continued to
be added. It criticised the lack
of due process and rapid speed at which the campaign was being implemented.
Videos and photos posted on social media showed streets clogged with clothes
and other belongings after migrants were given just minutes to pack up. Many who had lived in
the Chinese capital for years were only allowed to take what they could carry
before police sealed entire buildings. Authorities reportedly cut
water and electrical service in some cases.

“Any civilised and law
abiding society cannot tolerate this, we must clearly condemn and oppose these
actions,” the letter said. The haphazard nature
of the mass evictions make it difficult to determine exactly how many people
have been displaced. Migrants are being forced from their homes at the start of
Beijing’s winter and temperature have hovered around freezing for the past
week.

China operated a
national “household registration” system designed to control internal movement,
meaning migrant workers lack many of the rights compared to native Beijingers.
The system has been widely criticised for years and officials have pledged
reform but have made little progress. Beijing officials have
targeted a 15% cut
in population of the downtown districts from 2014 levels within the
next two years. That amounts to a reduction of about two million people, and
authorities have also plan to demolish 40m square metres of illegal housing.

“It’s somewhat astounding that the large
numbers of migrant workers could be evicted so quickly, but this is in part
because the Chinese authorities have systematically eroded all the ways people
can protect their rights,” said William Nee, a researcher at Amnesty
International in Hong Kong. “And, of course, China maintains the world’s
largest censorship apparatus, so that it’s hard to meaningfully debate issues
of injustice.” But Beijing officials
denied they were targeting migrant workers at all, and said it was focused on
safety. “It is irresponsible
and groundless to say the campaign is to evict the ‘low-end population’,” an
official from the Beijing Administration of Work Safety told local media.